Wednesday, March 7, 2012

I have been rather busy the past couple days. Just the usual stuff ... getting the house ready to sell, my never-ending dance with insurance companies, medical/dental stuff, & of course there's the general day-to-day housekeeping we all enjoy so much. I've also spent time stitching. I finished the Pineberry Lane JOY stitchings I had been working on. They needed to be stained & the snowflakes needed to be stitched & now they are all done : ) I will show you a photo of them soon.

Remember the mystery project I was working on? I finally received the WDW Navy floss I ran out of & now that project is finished as well! A photo of this one will have to wait because it's going to be a gift.

I've also been working on a new project. Once again I cannot share a photo yet (another gift). I will, however, tell you about my stitching experience. This is where we need to ponder the question in my post title. Cross stitch designers ... color blind, or sick sense of humor? I don't think I'm going to give anything away by telling you that there is a sheep in this design. I gathered together the floss which the designer said was used to stitch the model. I don't think so! I thought the color choices were a bit odd. The two main colors used are DMC 3032, Medium Mocha Brown, & DMC 3021, Very Dark Brown Gray. I thought it was a bit strange that to my eyes the colors reeked of green. I checked & rechecked the pattern instructions & the labels on the skeins of DMC. I was not comfortable but decided to go with the designer's choices. After all, the designer knows best, right?

The DMC 3021 is more of a dark green with some dark gray overtones. This was not too much of a traumatic experience since it is mostly used for the wording & border. However, DMC 3021is used for the sheep, & no matter what the online DMC charts will show you it is actually more of a light pea green. I should have listened to my stomach when I pulled these skeins out of my floss collection. I should have returned them to the collection & promptly looked for more appropriate colors, especially for the sheep. However, again I thought "the designer knows best" so I started stitching. Needless to say I was uncomfortable with these color choices even before I began stitching but I forged ahead & completed the stitching even though I could see that poor little sheep was not looking anywhere near the color of any sheep I have ever seen. Not only that but the designer chose DMC 355, Dark Terra Cotta, for the sheep's muzzle area. DMC 355 is actually quite red. What I ended up with was a green sheep with a red muzzle area. Freddy Krueger Visits the Farm. I suppose it's possible that the only sheep this designer ever saw in her entire life was one who was extremely nauseous & had been gnawing on a barbed wire fence for a couple days. That seems rather unlikely though. The other possibility is that this particular designer has a sick sense of humor. I can see her now, putting together her Floss Table & laughing as she pictured people stitching green sheep with red muzzles. Anyway, I ended up unstitching the sheep & choosing my own colors. Edith looks much more real now : )

Can you believe how quickly March is moving along? Although I have accomplished quite a bit as far as the house goes there is still a lot to be done. Be that as it may, we are going to have an overnighter at a casino in West Virginia tomorrow. Once or twice a year we go to a casino, stay overnight & spend about 20 bucks playing penny slot machines. It's a few hours of entertainment & it's nice to get away. Sometimes we actually come home with a dollar or two more than we left with! There are also medical/dental appointments this week, next week, & the week after that. By the end of all that activity March will be over! Then we can start the April appointments! Also this month we are planning a visit to Iron Mountain, Michigan for a couple days for some business we need to take care of. As some of you know, John & I used to live there. It is a little "nothing" sort of town, far away from just about anything really (the closest "real" mall was in Appleton, Wisconsin which is a 2-1/2 hour drive) but there are many good things about it & I would move back there in a heartbeat if I could. John, however, resists that idea. Michigan is a very expensive state in many ways. Be that as it may, I am hoping that as we drive around the area he will see that it is worth moving back there. We shall see. Heaven knows there's no limit to where we could move although John refuses to move anywhere out of the United States. Men can be so stubborn sometimes!

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comments:

Bwahahahaha! Sometimes you just have to wonder, don't you?? I can't tell you how many times I've looked at a pattern and thought, "What were they thinking???", but, as I am a HORRIBLE color picker-outer myself, I really can't throw any darts!! : ) You certainly made me laugh, though, and I'm glad you're little sheep got over being sea-sick.

Have a marvelous trip to IM!! Do you get to stop by Green Bay and go to the stitching store? We got there too late last weekend to go, but I got my bracelet in Appleton so that made up for it. : )

Well Shirlee, I guess you should have trusted your gut instinct with the sheep. Glad for you that the frogging is over with on that. Going to the Upper Peninsula huh? I've never been there, although I have been told that I sound like someone from there,yah hey dere! eh? :)

Sounds like someone was maybe drunk or something when they typed up that chart. LOL

The last chart I bought, their conversion for WDW Bark is 3021/3022. Except 3022 is a lighter green color. That felt really wrong so I just grabbed another brown instead. My colors don't have to match the chart exactly. ;) (I looked online and a more appropriate combo is 935/3787.)

I've also noticed the chart has some mistakes, I just X'd those off. And there's a line I won't be doing because I don't think it should really belong there, X'ed those off too. Changes changes!

Ha! This post should have come with a snort warning (now that I have to clean up morning coffee from my computer....) Only you dear Shirlee - only you!! You know, not all sheep are nice creamy off-whites - there are black and gray ones, and blackish gray ones and tan ones....but, yeah - never saw a green and red one myself. Even in Nod. And....wahhh! You're still not going to tell us the mystery project?! You're bad. Have fun at the casino - and in IM!!! Wow....you'll be really close to Nod (if one can ever be really close to Nod....) Enjoy.....the snow is trying to melt here today....40's they say....YIPPEE! Smiles & Hugs ~ Robin (Off to play a little catch-up....)

Awww Shirlee I had a giggle at the green and red sheep!!! Think she'd been playing with dye again???? I have noticed sometimes that I don't like the shades designers have chosen so I try and pick my own. Also find I sometimes have to do the same with conversions. Hope Edith stitches up smoothly now :)